MARCH 19TH

POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK

Never mind it, she'l be sober after the Holidays.

— Benjamin Franklin,1733

AMERICANREVOLUTION.ORG

FRANCE IN THE REVOLUTION

CHAPTER XI

AMERICA AND THE FRENCH PEOPLE

Many reasons united in leading France to espouse
the cause of the American colonists. Hatred of England and a
desire to lessen her power and obtain revenge for the calamities
of the Seven Years' War worked powerfully on the French mind.
The hope of gaining commercial advantages from the gratitude
of the new republic allured French statesmen. All these considerations
had their weight in the deliberations of the French ministers,
in whose hands were the issues of peace or war.

And yet there was an influence more potent
than any of these considerations of policy, of national advantage
and national dislike. If the American cause had not excited strong
enthusiasm among the French people, unless interference in behalf
of our forefathers had been not only approved but demanded by
the representatives of French thought, it is doubtful if the
government of Louis XVI would have taken up arms in behalf of
American independence. The American Revolution occurred at a
most opportune time. If the struggle for independence had begun
fifty years or even twenty-five years earlier, France would have
been as unlikely to interfere in our behalf as Spain or Austria.
But the principles for which our ancestors contended, the political
and social ideals which they represented, touched a sympathetic
chord in the France of Louis XVI. Our Revolution found a welcome
in the ferment of French thought that had begun. It was for this
reason that Franklin's influence was of such value to the people
he represented. At any time his talents and his wit would have
insured him a hospitable reception among the French people. But
when changes in scientific beliefs, in political faiths, in social
aspirations, were preparing the way for a political and social
revolution in France, Franklin was to an extraordinary extent
able to appeal to the people, and to arouse among them enthusiasm
for the nation and the cause of which he stood as the exponent.
Public opinion became at the last the most potent factor in controlling
the decision of the French government.

The problem of the American colonies attracted
the attention of French statesmen when French society hardly
distinguished Virginia from Massachusetts Bay; but in the rapid
changes of French thought, the public in 1778 exceeded the King's
counsellors in eagerness for interference in the cause of American
liberty. We are apt to think that public opinion has become an
element to be reckoned with only in these later days, and that,
in the time of an absolute monarchy, it could be safely disregarded.
Such a belief is far from correct. The influence of public thought
was as potent perhaps in the reign of Louis XVI as it is in France
to-day. It was indeed exercised by a much smaller body. The mass
of the population were too ignorant to hold any views on public
questions, except as these were brought home to them by the burden
of taxation or by a dull perception that others further up in
the social scale enjoyed unfair advantages. But if the body that
formed public opinion was small, it was exceedingly active. There
had never been a time when, among the nobility, the scholars
and philosophers, the prosperous bourgeois, discussion had been
so alert and so free. No subject was deemed too sacred to be
talked about, no institution was too venerable to be questioned.

To such expressions, which found utterance
in literature and in the journals of the day, in the talk of
the court and of the salon, the ministers of the King could not
turn a deaf ear. Necker, who became minister of finance only
a few months after the Declaration of Independence, recognized
to the fullest extent the influence of public opinion upon the
administration in France. "Favored by various causes,"
he says, "it is constantly increasing. It controls all spirits,
and princes themselves respect it . . . Most strangers can hardly
form a just idea of the authority which it exercises in France.
They comprehend with difficulty that invisible power which, without
treasure, without guards, and without arms, imposes its laws
on the city, on the court, and even in the palaces of kings."

It might have been supposed that neither the
principles nor the characters of our ancestors would have aroused
sympathy in French salons or among the French people. Certainly
this would have been true a century earlier, and that it was
not so now showed how rapidly French thought was drifting from
its ancient bearings. The rebellion of 1640 in England excited
no approval in France. The adherents of the Parliament were regarded
by the French as men actuated by pernicious principles, who murdered
their King, and illustrated the evils of an unbridled and lawless
liberty. Nor were the strict morals, the long faces, the formal
dress of the Puritans any more popular than their politics among
the nobles and courtiers of Versailles or the wits and poets
of Paris.

A little more than a century had passed, and
the descendants of the Puritans of 1640 were rebels against their
King, and were proclaiming theories of government that would
have seemed advanced to their ancestors. The social life, the
religious beliefs of the American colonists were not altogether
those of the soldiers of Cromwell, but they were quite as far
removed from those of Paris. In their rigorous theology, in their
strict and often tedious modes of life, there was apparently
little to attract a French noble or a French philosopher. A people
leading a provincial existence, very strict in its religious
observances, very loose in its political orthodoxy, among whom
a French philosopher would have found few listeners, and a courtier
from Versailles would have died of ennui, seemed ill fitted to
excite enthusiasm among the French people. And yet new political
aspirations and discontent with existing social conditions led
the French people to sympathize with the American colonists in
their struggle for independence.

At the close of the reign of Louis XV, one
who possessed the rare power of forecasting the future might
have anticipated a revolution in France, quite as much as in
America. The causes which at last resulted in the great upheaval
in France had long existed. The expressions of discontent and
of a desire for change had become so frequent that no one could
disregard them, though few realized their significance.

If one had contrasted the lot of the people
in France and in the American colonies, he might have anticipated
that in the one country revolution would result in a violent
social upheaval, while in the other it would only modify political
relations and leave the beliefs and condition of the people little
changed. Great wealth was rare in the thirteen colonies, but
their people as a whole enjoyed a prosperity which was not exceeded
in any other land. Nowhere else in the world, probably, were
there so few in actual need of the necessities of life, were
beggars so rare, was the number so small of those who went hungry
to bed. In France very different conditions prevailed. The lot
of the peasantry in that fertile land was not worse than in most
of Europe, but great was the contrast between the peasant of
Brittany or Auvergne and the farmer of Kent or the colonist of
Massachusetts.

No more accurate picture has been given of
a people than Arthur Young drew when he visited France not long
before the outbreak of the Revolution. In Salogne, he says, "
the fields are scenes of pitiable management, as the houses are
of misery "; in Brittany "the country has a savage
aspect, husbandry not much further advanced, at least in skill,
than among the Hurons . . . the people almost as wild as their
country." From Montauban he writes, "one third of what
I have seen of this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all
of it in misery." And thus he described the condition of
a large part of the French people, and their deplorable lot he
justly attributed to bad government and feudal exactions; he
found only privileges and poverty (Young, Travels in France,
19, 123, 125.)

"The people of our country," wrote
the Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, " live in frightful misery,
without beds, without furniture, . . . obliged to snatch bread
from their own mouths and their children's to pay the taxes .
. . The negroes of our islands are infinitely more happy."
(Clermont-Ferrand, Resume de I'Histoire d'Auvergne, 313.)
Poorly fed, dressed in rags, living in a hut, with half his scanty
earnings absorbed by taxes and feudal dues, the lot of the French
peasant was a melancholy contrast to that of the American farmer.

The privileges of the aristocracy had become
grievous. The peasant looked with anger on the game which fed
on his crop and which he dared not kill; he paid with bitterness
the feudal dues that were still enforced; be sullenly performed
the corvees to which he was still subjected. The prosperous bourgeois,
the wealthy farmer-general, better educated and better mannered
than their ancestors, and eager for a social equality to which
their great-grandfathers had not aspired, found in some artificial
distinction, some high-bred sneer or snub, a sting more bitter
and more irritating than the serious grievances of the peasant.
The rise of a country in which equality prevailed, where the
merchant and the lawyer held their recognized position in the
best society, where farmers were prosperous, and dingy huts and
hungry children were unknown, helped to strengthen resentments
that were already strong.

To those who claimed for the people a voice
in their own government, to those who pointed out the abuses
of the old regime, the American Republic appeared as the ideal
state of which they had declaimed. It has been said that the
Orleans family committed a grave political error when they allowed
the bones of Napoleon to be placed in a tomb in France, on which
the Napoleonic legend might grow anew. The Bourbon dynasty and
the old regime made a like error when they assisted in holding
up to the French people the spectacle of a newly created republic,
inhabited by a prosperous and contented people, proclaiming the
doctrines of popular sovereignty and the equality of all men
before the law. At almost any other period the Declaration of
Independence would have wakened few echoes in France. But French
philosophy and French literature had prepared society to receive
with enthusiasm the political doctrines and the pictures of social
life which came from across the Atlantic. The desire to injure
England, and the hope of profiting by the trade she might lose,
had more influence on Vergennes and the advisers of Louis XVI
than any sympathy with American colonists. But if these motives
had most weight with the politicians, they did not account for
the popular enthusiasm with which French society embraced the
American cause.

It was not among the peasantry, always ignorant
and usually miserable, that sympathy was felt for the American
colonists; to most of them the existence of America was hardly
known. But the condition of the common people now received from
those better provided with this world's goods a degree of attention
unthought of in the past. It was the time, as has been said,
when a man about to sup suddenly reflected that there were those
who had not yet dined. When a new interest was felt in the lot
of the masses, when plans were rife for improving agriculture,
for relieving poverty, for lessening the burden of taxation,
society was ready to espouse a popular cause on the other side
of the Atlantic.

The seventeenth century was one of the great
eras of French literature, but few indeed were the French books
which treated of political theories or political questions. Of
criticism of a man who held prominent position there was somewhat;
the administration of Mazarin and the troubles of the Fronde
created a copious literature of pamphlets and Mazarinades, but
these discussed personal animosities rather than political principles.
In all the picturesque chapters of the Fronde there is little
to be found except personal polities; whether insurrections were
led by princes of the blood or judges of the courts, they had
for their object changes in the persons who should possess power,
rather than changes in the system by which the state was to be
administered.

The influence of the salon was considerable
in France long before the days of Louis XVI; but until well into
the eighteenth century, while the salons were centres of social
and at times of literary action, in politics they took little
part. The appointment of a minister, the granting of a pension,
most of all, the selection by the sovereign of a new mistress,
were indeed eagerly discussed; but the principles of government
were not much more debated in the salon of Madame de Sevigne
or the palace of the Prince de Conti than they were in the home
of some bourgeois of Tours or the hut of some peasant in the
Cevennes.

Under Louis XIV the burden of taxation fell
heavily upon many, the lot of large portions of the population
was hard, yet there came no demand for change; conditions were
unfavorable, but they were regarded as being as much a result
of unchangeable laws as the devastating blasts that came from
the mountains or the drought that destroyed the crops. In the
reign of his successor, the situation was greatly altered. The
sanctity that hedges round a king had been dispelled, criticism
was outspoken, a desire for change was widespread. This was not
due to the fact that conditions had become worse, that poverty
was more general or distress more common. The contrary was the
case. The latter part of Louis XV's reign witnessed a marked
improvement in the economic condition of France. Business was
more active, the accumulation of wealth was more rapid; bad as
was the condition of the peasantry, it was better than it had
been in the reign of the Grand Monarque. Agriculture was still
backward, and yet during the thirty years preceding the Revolution
it probably made more progress than it had in three centuries
before. The rapid growth of Paris excited the dismay of those
who regarded this as a portentous omen, while Bordeaux, Marseilles,
and other cities doubled in population during the century.

The voice of complaint, the disposition to
blame the government for unfavorable conditions, became more
pronounced when these conditions tended to improve. Nor is this
strange. When a man's lot seems hopelessly bad, he submits to
it in dull despair; when a measure of improvement suggests the
possibility of still further gain, his discontent becomes more
active and the demand for change more articulate.

The demand for change had become not only
audible but insistent before Louis XV closed his career of shame.
The nation, wrote the Austrian ambassador, not long before Louis's
death, "pours out seditious words and indecent writings,
in which the person of the monarch is not spared." (Mercy-Argenteau
to Maria Theresa, April 16, 1771.) Kings are for the people and
not the people for the king, declared a document issued by a
body of lawyers, usually the most conservative class in the community.
A profession of atheism would not have seemed a more monstrous
sentiment to Louis XIV. "The cause of the people, by whom
and for whom you reign," said a remonstrance addressed to
Louis XV; and with similar declarations in pamphlets and official
documents, in the writings of philosophers, and from the mouths
of the rich and the noble, from lawyers and litterateurs, one
could have filled volumes.

At no era has conversation been more brilliant
or the charm of social influence more alluring, and at few periods
has there been greater freedom of discussion. Subjects which
a century before would, in France, no more have been brought
into controversy than would the inspiration of the Scriptures
at a conventicle presided over by John Knox, were now discussed
by all the world. There was no phase of religious belief, no
form of human government, hardly any institution of social life,
that was not considered as freely as the state of the weather
or the prospect of the crops.

The customs of the times made it possible
for social intercourse to be more attractive and more important
than in our era of pressing business and brief conversation.
Only those who lived before the Revolution, said Talleyrand,
knew the charm of life. Neither the nobles nor the philosophers
who met for constant discussion were pressed for time; the exchange
of thought was not a diversion but an occupation. At Baron Holbach's,
says an inmate of that salon, the conversation was the most animated
and the most instructive that it was possible to hear; the guests
met at two, they dined and talked until seven, often to meet
again in the evening, unwearied of discussions which never grew
dull.

Few took an active interest in the affairs
of state under Louis XIV; their curiosity was satisfied when
they were told of the latest victory of the Grand Monarque or
of the last fete at Versailles. There was no such indifference
under Louis XV. Thirty years ago, wrote Argenson, "the public
was not curious about the news of the state, now every one reads
the Gazette de France." (Memoires d'Argenson, 1754;
Miss Wormeley's translation, chap. x.) The Gazette de France
did not furnish as much information as a great daily of London
or New York does now, but its readers gained some knowledge as
to the affairs of their own country, while of transient publications,
that discussed every act of government and often with great freedom,
there was an unfailing supply. Words that had been little used
in talk or literature now became common speech. An acute observer
remarked that the word "nation," hardly pronounced
under Louis XIV, was now on every tongue. An enemy of the new
philosophy wrote: "This word 'liberty,' which is familiar
in these days, is very dangerous."

The influence exerted by the talk of the salon
was less than that of the newspapers of today, but never has
there been a time when literature so controlled public opinion.
The great writers of the age had done much of their work before
the troubles of American colonists were discussed in French salons.
Voltaire had long been at the height of his fame, Rousseau had
written his "Social Contract," Holbach's "System
of Nature " had appeared, the publication of the Encyclopaedia,
extending over years, had been brought to an end. The popularity
of these works was unabated. Discussions of government and society,
of religion and science, found a widely extended audience.

The more vigorously did they attack the beliefs
of the past, the more eagerly were they received; boldness in
thought, as well as skill in expression, characterized the literature
of the day, and however revolutionary the theories advanced,
they circulated in France, practically, with the same freedom
as in England. There was indeed, nominally, a government censorship
of the press; only books which it authorized could be sold and
read, and on the circulation of those under its ban ruinous penalties
were imposed; but this censorship was little more than a farce.
The governmental supervision of literature in France in the latter
half of the eighteenth century furnishes another illustration
of the impossibility of enforcing laws which no longer find a
support in public feeling. Many of the famous writers under Louis
XV spent brief terms in Vincennes or the Bastille; they emerged
from a mild confinement into a blaze of glory. Many a book was
burned by the public executioner; it was sold and read all the
more. If a writer could be sentenced to imprisonment and his
books be condemned to the flames, he might regard his literary
fortune as made. And thus a great mass of subversive and revolutionary
matter was circulated in France, among a public ready to receive
it; the seed was cast upon a soil in which it speedily fructified.
A society that a hundred years before would have regarded our
ancestors as rebels against the just authority of the King, now
saw in them the representatives of public liberties and political
reforms, which Frenchmen advocated with all the more vigor because
very often they did not understand them.

Activity in scientific research is apt to
be the precursor of change in political as well as in religious
beliefs. The scientific discoveries of the eighteenth century
excited great interest in France, and Frenchmen took an important
part in them. "More new truths concerning the external world,
"says Buckle, "were discovered in France during the
latter part of the eighteenth century than during all the previous
periods put together." In geology and natural history, in
anatomy and chemistry, in electricity and the laws of heat and
light, French students did pioneer work. Interest in scientific
questions was not confined to those who studied them, but extended
to the great numbers who wished to hear of them. The lecture
rooms of well-known professors of chemistry and anatomy were
almost as crowded as the theatres, and more crowded than the
churches. The work done by Franklin in electricity had much to
do with the reception he received in France when he first visited
that country. Fame in scientific discovery secured for him a
more prompt and cordial greeting than if he had been known only
in literature or politics. The experiments with the kite excited
in France a degree of interest which was not exceeded, even if
it was equalled, in his own country.

It was not only religious thought that was
affected by these new phases of intellectual activity; but a
community which was interested in discussing the laws of the
universe and the anatomy of man soon began to consider the laws
of government and the anatomy of the state. A desire for change,
new conceptions of government, a willingness to be done with
the institutions of the past, an infinite confidence in the promise
of the future, had taken possession of French literature and
French society.

An era of boundless hope preceded the French
Revolution, and it has been well portrayed by one of the young
nobles who crossed the Atlantic to fight for liberty in America.
Describing this idyllic period, at the close of a long and active
life in which he had seen the overthrow of an ancient monarchy,
had been imprisoned in the Terror, had served under Napoleon
at the height of his glory, and had witnessed the downfall of
the Emperor and the dismemberment of his empire, the Comte de
Segur says: "Without regret for the past, without anxiety
for the future, we walked gaily on a carpet of flowers that concealed
an abyss . . . All that was ancient seemed to us wearisome and
ridiculous. The gravity of old doctrines oppressed us. The laughing
philosophy of Voltaire amused and bewitched us . . . We were
ready to follow with enthusiasm the philosophical doctrines advanced
by bold and brilliant leaders. Voltaire appealed to our intelligence,
Rousseau touched our hearts." (Segur, Memoires (2d
ed.), i, 27,41.) Naturally they praised the heroes of Greece
and Rome and read the republican literature of Switzerland and
Holland; at the theatre the praise of liberty and the abuse of
tyrants met with thunders of applause, "at the court they
lauded the republican maxims of Brutus, we talked of independence
in the camps, of democracy among the nobles, of philosophy at
balls, and of morality in boudoirs." (lbid., 82.)
"Everyone believed that he was marching to perfection, without
being embarrassed by obstacles and without fearing them. We were
proud of being French and still more proud of being French of
the eighteenth century, which we regarded as the golden age brought
upon earth by the new philosophy." (lbid., 257.)

It was natural that in this condition of idyllic
hopefulness in the future progress of society, the principles
declared by American colonists should captivate men who looked
with distrust on all that was old and turned with eagerness to
all that was new. Wearied with artificial modes of life, French
aristocrats discovered what they believed to be their ideals
among the American folk; they were charmed by the simple, earnest
life of New England farmers, and discovered the virtues of Roman
worthies in American statesmen. The Continental Congress seemed
the image of the Roman Senate, and its cause the cause of progress
and liberty. The first cannon fired in the New World to defend
the standard of liberty, says Segur, resounded in all Europe.
Even at the watering-places the seekers for amusement made of
America a fashion, and invented a game at cards which they styled
Boston (Segur, Memoires, i, 81.)

Thus it was that popular sentiment exercised
its influence in the councils of the King and that an alliance
with the United States and war with England not only received
the approval of statesmen, but excited the enthusiasm of the
nation. During the five years that the war continued, the French
people remained constant in the cause. Doubtless some of those
who were most eager would have stood aghast if they had realized
that the part taken by France in the American Revolution was
to have its influence in preparing the way for the French Revolution.
The very causes, the conditions of thought, the relaxation of
ancient beliefs, the confidence in advantages that would result
from future change, distrust of the past, and hope for the future,
which were preparing the French for their own revolution, made
them enthusiastic in their efforts to assist their American allies.